More Sonoff Mini vs. Shelly One Comparisons | Home Automation

at the end of the video I made comparing
the Sonoff mini and the Shelly One I asked the question “what did I miss?”
and I got a few answers these were the things that everybody said I missed so
in this video we’re gonna dig into those ready let’s go one of the most important
things that I failed to mention in the previous video was that the relay in the
showi is not connected to the power input all it is is a dry contact between
the I and the O so if you wanted to use this for a low voltage switching
scenario like we do with the garage door opener you could do that but with the
Sun off mini the line-in is what gets switched at the relay so you can’t use
this with like a garage door or some low voltage LEDs this takes 120 or 240 in
and switches that same circuit at the relay that means only the Shelly can be
used in those situations where you want to switch a circuit that’s different
than the power that’s coming into the device point to Shelly moving on so
here’s the Shelly connected to power okay it’s live I’ll be very careful
now we measure between neutral and switch contact okay just make sure
you’re aware that that switched contact carries 120 volts measuring the voltage
at the switch contactors gives me nothing when it’s off but when it’s on I
get 3 volts another point that I failed to cover in
the last video was how these two devices perform in different three ways switch
configurations I filmed a much longer explanation of this and I’m gonna put it
out in a separate video but to be brief if your wiring looks like this where the
power comes in to the light box and then goes out to the switches or if your
wiring looks like this where the power comes in and the wires to the lights go
out of one of the switch boxes then either the Shelly one or the so enough
mini will work fine again I’ll go through details of how you wire those up
in a different video however if your wiring looks like this then there is a
way that you can use the Shelly one and Rob from the hookup explained how to do
that in a video a long time ago there’s the link the Shelly one works in this
situation because of its ability to isolate the relay since the Sun off mini
can’t do that it doesn’t work in this situation
in the way that Rob describes if your wiring looks like this I don’t really
know what to tell you good luck so there you go there’s one scenario
that the Shelly will work in that the sawn-off won’t so that’s another point
for Shelly next I also looked at resting power consumption I took each of these
devices connected them to a sawn-off s31 for power monitoring and let them idle
for eight hours as you can imagine the power consumption fluctuates quite a bit
even at rest so I took the average over those eight hours and a thousand data
points and the results almost identical on average the Shelly used 0.1 one amps
and the Sun off mini 0.12 amps it doesn’t seem like a big enough
difference to matter to me but now you know moving on okay here’s my load test
set up Shelly first I got an s 31 here because I want to measure the current
and then I got a 1500 watt heater let’s see what happens
the sonne off s 31 is reading 14.26 amps right now we’ll see how this sucker
holds up it’s been one hour the laser says look like 47 infrared camera says
49 point 6 all right get back in an hour it’s been two hours now forty-nine fifty
maybe fifty one point four back in an hour
oh there’s a fifty one fifty-four on this we’re gonna keep
going okay back again not getting anything
more than 49 we may have hit the peak 50 I’m gonna check back one more time in
one hour and if it’s not any hotter then maybe
we’ll call this one done okay I forgot to set the timer so it’s been quite a
while it’s quite a bit cooler outside 43 is all I see kind of went through a hot
spell in the afternoon and has cooled off a little bit so 48 48 49 that’s it
I think the Shelly held up pretty well so time to now swap it out for the Sun
off Minnie according to the instructions this has a 10 amp maximum I already know
that this is a 14 amp load so I am definitely risking damaging my son off
mini which has me a little sad I will miss you so enough Minnie if you perish
but since we’re doing a comparison and it seems like the right thing to do to
use the same load so that’s what we’re gonna do here goes all right my son off
mini has only been cooking for about a half an hour but I’m just terribly
curious 23 31 33 34 that’s better than I thought it would be 35 on this Wow it
hasn’t heated up terribly kind of thought it would start to melt fairly
soon check back later it’s probably been hour and a half it’s a little unfair cuz
the Sun’s up so I think it’s gonna be extra hot 52 54 and the hottest pot 57
little unfair with the Sun on it because this wall itself is hot we’re gonna stop
until this gets in the shade it’s afternoon it’s been an hour plus 49 49.7
that is a lot less than it was at 9 o’clock this morning when the Sun was
beatin on it so that was an unfair test so this is gonna be much better see in
an hour well it seems we’ve had an event it turned off it’s not terribly hot that
didn’t take long it’s been about two hours I think since I turned it on if
nothing else we did discover that you should not use a 14 amp load on the
sawn-off mini probably kind of knew that all right time for the autopsy I guess
kind of knew this was possible got this guy connected up here now
nothing so it’s dead you killed it well don’t
load it beyond ten amps I only have one more of these I could use a smaller load
but I don’t know that that would really be a fair heat test I don’t see anything
visibly wrong there’s no burnt components that I can
really see but it’s sure dead so a moment of silence for our fallen comrade okay what’s next
Wi-Fi signal check I’ve got my Shelli connected to a really really long
extension cord so I’m gonna walk out there and see how far I can go before I
lose connection might not be the best test but it’s a test so here we go okay still good here
still good here still good here that’s as far as I can
go to test it still works now we’ll do the same thing with this on/off mini same test now but using the so knife
mini I’m gonna take a hike be right back plenty responsive there
no problem there no problem there it’s into the court no problem there no delay
nothing I don’t think we’re proving anything with this test this already has a sawn-off basic in it
for some reason this box is the worst Wi-Fi signal of any of my devices I
think it has to do with a vent there’s a tin air conditioning air return vent
here in the wall next to it so that I think has something to do with it even
though there’s a router access point here 15 feet away so it should get a
good signal but I lose this device all the time I’m thinking this is probably
the worst spot for device to potentially connect to my network so this is where
I’m gonna test the Shelly and the sawn-off mini I’ll put them both in here
and then I’ll use tez Moda to see how the connection is all right so in here
this was actually a 3-way switch so this is a three-way wire that isn’t being
used anymore we’re gonna stuff that back in there here’s our grounds which we
don’t need we’re to stuff those back in there and this is neutrals this is the
hot and this is to the lights so that’s our output Shelley goes first so let’s
start making some connections so beat the output I’m gonna need some wires to
go from this to the line and the input and then I’ve got a switch here as well
this is also going to serve as how we’ll see how well this actually fits in there
okay one black coming out of the line and one for the in on the relay and we’re going to tie those two
together with the hot okay we’ve got a neutral wire neutral there he switches don’t do too well with
skinny little wires all right we’re gonna put this to switch
and we’re going to put this to the hot that’s everything I’m gonna briefly turn
on the circuit breaker and see if it works before I stuff it back in there
all right circuit breakers back on and we’ve got
functionality there and here perfect let’s check out under information 88%
that’s our Wi-Fi strength stick it in the box to purposes there 1 we’ll see if
that decreases 2 we’ll see how well it fits in the box so back to turn the
circuit breaker off since those two guys right there would shock or dr. Zee’s
pretty good it’s pretty well plenty of room one more
test and then we switch it out for the Sun off toggles on and off just fine all
right let’s just double-check that Wi-Fi
connection again okay we’re down to 82 percent which as I recall was about what
that sawn-off basic was was giving me as well was 82% its on/off min Eastern okay
we’ve got neutral in in and this is neutral now we just need these two
which legs I will check everything neutral neutral
neutral neutral lying in going up there with the three-way wires which is
getting power from across the room great online out right that way and then the
to switch connectors okay that’s it turn on the breaker check it out okay and
then we go to information and look at that a signal strength is 74% and this
has this this antenna hmm okay well I’ll stick it on a box we’ll try and expose
the antenna and then we’ll see what happens to our 74% and I’m putting this antenna way out
here let’s see if that does any good try and give it the best chance possible
they both fit just fine in the box honestly the song off is a little bigger
but the Shelly requires more wires so I think it’s a wash either way I think
having extra wires makes it a little bit harder for the Shelly to fit in even
though it’s smaller and then the Sun off not having the wires kind of makes up
for being a little bigger I didn’t have a problem fitting either one of them in
probably the easiest of all the things I’ve ever tried to stuff in a switch box okay that’s all working for
at 78% so still lower even with this thing hanging out here still lower than
the lowest that the show it got how about that
Wi-Fi strength Shelley wins and then bars how they fit they both fit just
fine so well that’s it part two of the Shelley one versus son
off mini comparison we looked at the different voltages on their switch
connections we put them in different three-way switch configurations looked
at the resting power consumption put them under a load and did temperature
testing and in the process killed my son off mini fit him in a switch box and
tested the Wi-Fi strength that’s pretty thorough and through it
all Shelley came out on top again still doesn’t mean there’s not a place for the
Sun off fact I am gonna leave that other Sun off Mini in that switch box where I
was testing the Wi-Fi connections because I want to connect a temperature
and humidity sensor in that spot because I need one in that area of the house if
you want to see other comparisons let me know that’s all for now as always thanks
for watching til next time adios if you need help or want to chat with me
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howdy-ho s–

There are too little electrical engineers (circuit builders) in Bulgaria, but It's seems there are enough good ones. Thumbs up.Another good product from the city of Plovdiv this time are the Olimex circuit boards (SoC). They have boards specially build for alexa or g-assistant.

I'm interested in your upcoming 3-way switching video as I think I have the wiring set up like in the 2nd scenario you show where the line comes into the light and then goes out to the first switch box – since there are not neutrals in the switch box does the shelly go the light fixture box?

For all the fiddling around inside of switch boxes, wire nuts are so 20th century. You need to get yourself some WAGO "Lever Nut" connectors. These things are awesome! You'll never wonder if you got all the wires connected inside the wire nut, they're easy to remove and replace a single wire at a time, and you can imagine actually connecting together up to 5 wires reliably if you need to. See https://www.amazon.com/slp/wago-wire-connector/dzxsrhkj6f2k9tp and probably a bunch of YouTube videos, too. You'll never go back to wire nuts again.

7:03 Is that your font yard??? That's… huge. 😉In my opinion sonoff had a great chance to create an awesome product which can compete to shelly. They knew which are the benefits of the shelly.But they've just built a sonoff basic in a smaller case with accessible gpio pins to connect a switch. Nothing special. I even don't get the point why there aren't accessible TX/RX/GPIO0/GND/3,3V connectors on the PCB. This is not DIY….

I thought the last two contacts of sonoff mini were only for "signal", not supposed to have load, so i used two wires from an audio installation. Will they burn in long time load?Thanks for this review!!!

Nice! Very useful comparisons and tests! I never bothered testing the temperature with my sonoff basics attached to the garage door motor(just checked and it hovers around 45 to 50c!!). So this was helpful and serves as a helpful reminder to check the load/temp… and now I want to get both the sonoff mini and shelly one!!

I haven't done any power consumption measuring of any of my home automation devices, except my Raspberry Pis, which came in at only about 2W (for my Rpi 2B honeypot – not doing much). I saw the 0.11/0.12A in your test. Does that imply that at 120V, these consume some 14W of power? That would be shocking! My 8TB NAS runs at 22W or so and the PIs are in the 2 to 10W range. Can you please confirm? thanks